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Russian Tourist Offered Employee $1 Million to Cripple Tesla with Malware

posted by Fnord666 on Saturday August 29 2020, @04:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the insider-threats dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Russian tourist offered employee $1 million to cripple Tesla with malware:

Tesla's Nevada Gigafactory was the target of a concerted plot to cripple the company's network with malware, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on Thursday afternoon.

The plan's outline was divulged on Tuesday in a criminal complaint that accused a Russian man of offering $1 million to the employee of a Nevada company, identified only as "Company A," in exchange for the employee infecting the company's network. The employee reported the offer to Tesla and later worked with the FBI in a sting that involved him covertly recording face-to-face meetings discussing the proposal.

"The purpose of the conspiracy was to recruit an employee of a company to surreptitiously transmit malware provided by the coconspirators into the company's computer system, exfiltrate data from the company's network, and threaten to disclose the data online unless the company paid the coconspirators' ransom demand," prosecutors wrote in the complaint.

Was the Russian working for Ivan Vanko?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:48PM (1 child)

    by RS3 (6367) on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:48PM (#1043746)

    not to mention kiddy diddlers and other criminals. I presume Trump maintains reasonably high security standards.

    Then you had to go all childish, and make a cliche political jab. Uncouth and sad.

    I gather from Runaway's followup comment that he accidentally typed "Trump" when he had intended to type "Musk". So please replace "Trump" with "Musk" and see how it works for you.

    If the Russian government wanted IP from Tesla, they'd already have it... i.e. the perpetrator is a Russian nutjob, or this is a farce.

    Good point. I posit: maybe Russian govt. (or whoever is supposedly behind this) already has the IP they want and this whole tourist / spy thing is a smokescreen.

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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:50PM

    by RS3 (6367) on Saturday August 29 2020, @02:50PM (#1043749)

    Now it's my turn- I meant "propose", not "posit". Hitting "submit" when in a rush is never good...